Ok, I did some more digging around music section support - and was able to improve some edges. Replace assets/templates/Music_Track.xml with the attached file and have a look...
Anybody out there with experience around those plists?
Open questions...
- template-name: "list, shelf, item"... Which options are available, what parameters are needed? Why is aTV crashing if you choose "album"?
- Why do i need two template-names... list on top, shelf later. Can one do a list only as well?
- How can we activate the "several songs in a row"- feature? Is there just a little parameter missing?
- Having similar options in plist vs XML (see list, shelf), does the music player need plists? Can we use plain XML as in other PlexConnect templates) as well?
Will these files fix a grid view for the Music section? That would be awesome. B)
Not sure what Baa intentions are but my efforts were aimed at continuous playback/playlists in Music/Music videos sections. Unfortunately, I'm lacking needed skills :(
I guess, other "skins" like grid would be the easier part if points 2 and 3 are solved. :-)
By the way, I was able to reduce the plist overhead for a "Song".
It would be great to figure out how 1) play it directly - i.e.. without that preplay screen or 2) enable the album/playlist view with the nice "shuffle" feature.
Stupid thing... I really haven't found any documentation on that. :-(
I guess, other "skins" like grid would be the easier part if points 2 and 3 are solved. :-)
By the way, I was able to reduce the plist overhead for a "Song".
It would be great to figure out how 1) play it directly - i.e.. without that preplay screen or 2) enable the album/playlist view with the nice "shuffle" feature.
Stupid thing... I really haven't found any documentation on that. :-(
When I last attempted to fiddle with plists I was trying to fed plist file to ATV. My reasoning was that ATV would populate shuffle and allow play without pre-play screen automatically. What I never solved is how to push plist exported from iTunes to ATV.
If I understood current situation in PlexConnect (as I'm no expert at all) it is using podcast template and I'm not sure if there's an actual way around problems you are mentioning above as that is the way podcasts are being navigated in ATV.
Of course I may be all wrong here. Baa, is there a way to push exported plist to ATV?
>> When I last attempted to fiddle with plists I was trying to fed plist file to ATV. My reasoning was that ATV would populate shuffle and allow play without pre-play screen automatically.
That's exactly what we need... did you get anything running in that area?
Yes, PlexConnect is using the podcast template - I sure would like to switch it to a "song" template... And once we have figured out the plist scheme that will aTV make replaying the whole album, playlist, whatever you call it, we can use XMLConverter to generate the correct format. Similar to the movies/shows: Grab the data from PMS, stuff it into the XML/plist and let aTV think, it's a good one from Apple...
I just have no idea how to display a multi song list, with the ability to shuffle or play in a row in one plist. Or as another option, how to start playing one song without user interference like today (having to press the PLAY button).
I don't see the need to push iTunes exported plists to aTV, we will poke PMS to come up with the file list, won't we?
Well, you were able to interface to Libraries, Channels, and even MyPlex. PMS 0.9.9.14 now has a new capability (playlists) that probably could be handled as a separate "feeder" to PlexConnext.
I don't see the need to push iTunes exported plists to aTV, we will poke PMS to come up with the file list, won't we?
Sure. My thinking was - if I use exported plist I'm sure that formatting and all needed info is there. If ATV would play that plist when served from PlexConnect and all shuffle and playlist functions are there then I can move to a next step - generating those files from PlexConnect itself, using the info from PMS.
Unfortunately, I have never understood how to push that iTunes exported plist from PlexConnect to ATV in order to get proof of concept :(
